


The Garrison Trio

by Padfoots_Pawprint



Series: Julance 2019 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Friendship, Garrison trio, Gen, JuLance, Julance 2019, the start of a beautiful friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 23:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20125954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Padfoots_Pawprint/pseuds/Padfoots_Pawprint
Summary: Pidge never thought she would bond with Hunk and Lance. In hindsight, she should have expected it.





	The Garrison Trio

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Lance’s hands still, and a glob of fluorescent green from his paintbrush falls dramatically onto the newspaper they’ve lined the floor with. “What’s not?”

Pidge squints at the horridly bright mural that now defaces the wall next to Iverson's office. Lance, in all his gangly glory, is perched atop Hunk's shoulders like they're playing a game of Chicken, and Hunk looks perfectly content with his lot in life despite nodding at Pidge's comment. Her light eyes flicker back to Lance expectantly and Lance, as always, provides.

"Listen Pidge, dude, my guy." Pidge rolls her eyes for reasons she knows Lance will never know about. "Even someone as intelligent as you can see the pure irony of painting a huge green alien on the wall next to the dude running the space exploration program, no?"

"You called me out for this? We have another simulator run tomorrow." A complete waste of time, if you ask Pidge, but she's here and pretending that space exploration for the sake of science is all she's ever wanted, and she'd hate to fall out of character. "You know that, right?"

"I know that," Lance says seriously, even though he looks half a fool on top of Hunk's shoulders.

Not that that is unusual. She's known them for about six months and it has been...interesting. Many levels of interesting, actually. Her companions are loud and funny and clever. Deceptively so. She's seen Hunk subtly reconfigure the security settings on a stray maintenance droid just so he and Lance could skip out to town for drinking or dancing. Or this, she realizes, for getting painting materials with which they will deface military property. 

Hunk comes off as someone both kind and supportive, if not a bit cowardly. He's not as outspoken as Lance, but when he knows the answer to a question, he announces it proudly, with no room for doubt. With his technical knowledge, skill, and playfully positive nature, he's someone Pidge can see herself growing very comfortable around.

Lance, on the other hand, she's still figuring out. Just when she thinks she has him down, he swims out of reach. How he and Hunk became friends, she doesn't know, but she does know that Lance is a ringleader, a center of attention. He has a curious way with words when it comes to figures of authority, balancing precariously between absolute obedience and outright insubordination. It is fascinating to witness, like an unpredictable experiment that's success relies on the flip of a coin. And yet, he has never made the same mistake twice, adapting and learning while maintaining his absolute ignorance.

"But I also know that our simulator practice is nothing like an actual jet," Lance carries on, "which requires complete and absolute teamwork."

"Which relates to this how?"

"What Lance is trying to say is that we need to hang out more. As friends." Hunk's clarification whispers through the empty hallway. "We've gotta be able to trust each other, in and out of the sim."

"And because of that, you want me as a lookout?" See, this is one of those times where Lance's logic didn't seem to make sense. Why would you ask the newest addition to the team to be something as vital as a lookout? Pidge has been consistently turning down their invitations to sneak out in favour of listening to radio chatter on the Garrison's poorly secured rooftop. She accompanies them at lunch sometimes, has found them entertaining at best. But enough to cover all their asses for a meaningless (and maybe mildly humorous) prank?

"Yeah, we're friends," says Lance. "We've gotta have each other's back."

Friends, huh. Pidge had had 'friends' before, but she is starting to think that maybe Lance and Hunk aren't the same as those friends at all. There's a loyalty here that she's never experienced before, a fierce desire to share and support.

"And if we get caught?"

"We won't. Not with you keeping an eye on the cameras and the rounds the teachers are making."

"And what makes you think I'll be able to do that?"

"Listen up, Communications Officer," Lance points the brush at her and a line of paint trails after it, splattering a weak threat across the newspaper, "don't think I haven't seen the re-jigging you've done in the middle of training when you think Professor Montgomery isn't looking. You could probably hack into the Garrison's security system in a heartbeat."

Observant, Pidge realizes belatedly as Lance angles back towards the wall. He's observant too.

"Besides, are you telling me you don't want the chance to root through Iverson's personal computer?"

_Of course_ she does. She's already done it more than once. But another chance at it? A freely given opportunity by her new almost friends?

"Fine." Lance cheers quietly and Hunk drops a hand from Lance's ankle to give Pidge a thumbs up.

"Hell yeah. Let's do this then. Make sure you let us know how long we have until we're discovered so we can start preparing to clean up and hide this stuff."

"How do you expect to hide any of this?" Asks Pidge as she begins to fiddle with the electronic lock on Iverson's door. Unlike the first time, she's managed to slip in and out without alerting him, and she will continue to do so, if she has anything to say about it. With Lance and Hunk on the line, she knows that she's got more at stake than her own expulsion.

"Just trust me. It'll be fine."

And yet, it could very well not be fine. She could rat them out. She could fail them. She could be a horrible lookout. She could take this opportunity and search for her father and Matt, just as she has been these last few months, and forsake her flight team. It shouldn't matter to her, who doesn't have time to make friends and fool around and be a goddamn lookout.

But it does somehow, that they include her in their dumb plans just to spend time with her, like they care, and maybe it'll mean something more when she has the time to decipher what feeling she's experiencing, but for now she sets her mouth in a line of concentration and, for the first time trusts.

* * *

"So did you get caught or not?" asks Allura, her eyes wide and curious just as Coran's are. Shiro and Keith, who were not privy to those events either, are listening to her story with amusement and awe, respectively. Her friends (she can call them that now with full confidence) sit on either side of her and sport matching grimaces at this question

"Nope." Pidge’s smirk is wide and smug as Lance coughs from her side of the couch.

"Excuse you. We got caught."

"Not my fault. I did my job." She takes a long, dramatic sip of her water pouch before saying, "You didn't realize how bad the paint would stain."

"It stained?" gapes Keith.

Shiro chuckles openly. "I've sure Iverson did not like that," he says around a laugh.

Pidge snorts out half a laugh. "He definitely didn't like it when he stepped into his office and had the rest of the paint can dumped on him."

A roar of laughter and horror fills their common room and Pidge, Hunk and Lance exchange fond smiles before Lance launches into the tale of his unfortunate detention and the green stains on Iverson’s body that had lasted for weeks. He rallies Hunk to aid in the retelling, and Pidge watches her boys trade details and take turns explaining the exciting and somewhat unfortunate events that followed their graffiti stint at the Garrison. They express their experiences with all the same energy and dorkiness that they'd had in the Garrison, and Pidge feels like she's fifteen all over again, watching this duo work their magic on a crowd, watching at Hunk's jokes ring true and Lance's energy pulls everyone in.

And then Lance turns to her, beaming, and draws her into the conversation again, just as magnetic and welcoming as he's always been, even when she was prickly and desperate to be rid of them. _Ring leader_, she thinks again before correcting herself. Lance is like a sun, pulling everything else into its gravitational pull; the code by which all other programs abide by. Just like he has collected all the rest of them together by sheer luck and will (and the fated Blue Lion), they are all together, friends and family gathered within the safety of his glow.

And she basks in it.


End file.
